Captain Edward J. Ruppelt

Tag: Captain Edward J. Ruppelt

This Scoutmaster Had a Run-in with a UFO. The Kids Saw it Too.

September 4, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Colin Bertram August 21, 2018 (history.com)

• On a hot and humid evening of August 19, 1952, Scoutmaster D.S. “Sonny” DesVergers, 30, was driving a group of Boy Scouts home when he saw a bright light flash over Military Trail near West Palm Beach, Florida, in a dense palmetto grove in the South Florida Everglades. DesVergers pulled onto the shoulder of the highway entered the grove with a machete and a flashlight to take a closer look, leaving the young scouts in the car.

• DesVergers reached a clearing in the grove and immediately smelled a nauseating smell. Then he felt an oven-like heat coming from above. Looking up he saw that he was standing beneath a hovering object – circular, 30 feet in diameter with a height of 10 feet, a convex dome, and the bottom edge was lit with a phosphorescent glow.

• DesVergers saw and heard the hatch on the “ship” open. A red, flare-like light came from the side of the craft and slowly moved toward him. As he slowly moved backward, he covered his face with his hands as the red ball of light grew into a red mist engulfing him until he lost consciousness.

• When he awoke an hour later, DesVergers was leaning against a tree and his eyes burned. He ran back to the highway where he was met by the boys and local authorities. One of the boys said that he had seen a semi-circle of white lights descending into the trees, and then a red light. That’s when the boys ran to a nearby farmhouse to call the Palm Beach County deputy’s office. The deputy on the scene said, “In all my 19 years of law-enforcement work, I’ve never seen anyone as terrified as [DesVergers] was.”

• DesVergers and the boys were questioned at the Sheriff’s Office. The hair on DesVergers’ forearms was singed, his skin burned, and there were three tiny burn holes in the bill of the scoutmaster’s cap.

• The incident eventually made its way to the lead UFO investigator for the US Air Force and Blue Book chief, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who would later call the event “the best hoax in UFO history”. DesVergers was painted as an opportunist and media-hungry conman who sold his story to The American Weekly newspaper the following year.

• Ruppelt’s team took grass and soil specimens at the site. When tested, agronomists noted that while the soil remained intact, the root structure of the plants and the lower leaves were charred black and deteriorated by heat.

• The DesVergers incident remains one of the most intriguing UFO cases in the Air Force’s now-declassified Project Blue Book. The Air Force was never able to prove the incident was a hoax, and to this day, it is still unsolved.

On a humid, August night in 1952, scoutmaster D.S. “Sonny” DesVergers emerged burned and barely coherent from a dense palmetto grove in the South Florida Everglades. He claimed he had encountered an unidentified flying object that discharged a fireball, which left him singed and barely able to see.

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, chief UFO investigator for the U.S. Air Force, would later label the event “the best hoax in UFO history.” But the DesVergers incident remains one of the most intriguing cases from Project Blue Book, the Air Force’s now-declassified investigations into UFOs—because it wasn’t just a sighting incident, but one involving a purported attack. To this day, it’s still unsolved.

Cue appropriately spooky “X-Files” music.

A series of investigations conducted by the U.S. Air Force between 1952 and 1969, Project Blue Book was tasked with scientifically analyzing UFO-related incidents to determine whether they were a threat to national security. Some say the project was commissioned to find rational explanations for these mysterious phenomena, to help quell a growing Cold War-era public hysteria over unidentified objects in the sky. UFO fever reached such intensity that in April 1952, four months before the DesVergers incident, LIFE magazine published a story called “Have We Visitors from Space?”

Pulling over to inspect a bright flash of light

As Ruppelt would later chronicle in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, on the evening of August 19, 1952, hardware-store clerk and Scoutmaster DesVergers, 30, was driving a group of Boy Scouts home when he saw a bright light flash over Military Trail near West Palm Beach, Florida.
Thinking it may be a downed plane or car accident, DesVergers pulled onto the shoulder of the highway so he could take a closer look. Armed with a machete and flashlights, he entered the palmetto grove near where he saw the lights, leaving the three boys in the vehicle with instructions to alert the residents of a nearby farmhouse if he did not return in 15 minutes.

According to the declassified documents, after about four minutes of hacking through the bush DesVergers entered a clearing in the grove. The first thing he described was an acute, nauseating smell and then the feeling of somebody or something watching him. He next experienced a sensation of oven-like heat coming from above. Looking up, DesVergers said, he could not see any stars as he was standing beneath a hovering object.

The object was circular, DesVergers recounted, dull black, with no seams, about 30 feet in diameter with a height of 10 feet, a convex dome atop it and the bottom edge lit with a phosphorescent glow.

Enveloped by a red mist

What happened next is what separates DesVergers’ encounter from thousands of other UFO sightings: As he slowly moved backward, he recalled, he heard a noise like metal against metal, “like a hatch opening,” after which a red, flare-like light came from the side of the object and slowly moved toward him. (DesVergers constantly referred to it as a “ship” when recounting the tale to the authorities) As he placed his hands over his face—fists closed, hand over each eye—the red ball of light grew into a red mist, engulfing him. It was then, he recounted, that he lost consciousness.

When he awoke, DesVergers said, he was leaning against a tree, but could not see properly as his eyes burned. Scrambling back through the palmettos, his eyesight slowly returning to normal, he burst, incoherent, out onto the highway, where he was met by the boys and local authorities.

‘I’ve never seen anyone as terrified as he was’

The three scouts, Bobby Ruffing, 12, David Rowan, 11, and Chuck Stevens, 10, remained in the car after DesVergers entered the grove. Later, in recounting what he witnessed to authorities, Ruffing said he initially saw a semi-circle of white lights descending into the trees. Ruffing also recounted seeing a red light through the brush, as did Rowan and Stevens, who told of also seeing DesVergers’ flashlight through the trees before going dark. That’s when the scouts headed to the nearby farmhouse for help; a Palm Beach County deputy and Lake Worth constable responded to the farmer’s call for assistance.

Returning to the site of the abandoned vehicle almost an hour after DesVergers first said he saw the lights, the officers and scouts witnessed the scoutmaster emerge from the palmettos, waving his machete and babbling incoherently. “In all my 19 years of law-enforcement work, I’ve never seen anyone as terrified as he was,” the deputy is recorded as saying in Ruppelt’s investigation.

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When a U.S. Fighter Pilot Got Into a Dogfight With a UFO

August 5, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Colin Bertram July 19, 2018 (history.com)

• On October 1, 1948, a 25-year old former World War II fighter pilot named George F. Gorman (standing at left in above photo) had a 27-minute encounter with a white orb UFO at high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gorman told a local newspaper following the event. “If anyone else had reported such a thing I would have thought they were crazy.” The incident was recorded both on the ground and in the sky by numerous reputable sources, and investigated by the U.S. Air Force under Project Sign, a precursor to Project Blue Book.

• Gorman was serving as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard, and was taking part in a cross-country flight in a P-51 Mustang alongside other National Guard airmen. When the other pilots landed at Fargo’s Hector Airport, Gorman stayed in the air in order to get in some night-flying time in the cloudless conditions. Having circled over a lighted football stadium, he was preparing to land at about 9 pm when he saw the taillight of another craft passing on the right, though the tower had no other object on the radar.

• Gorman closed to within 1,000 yards to see a white orb “…about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely without fuzz at the edges.” “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”

• Gorman tried in vain to catch up with the object, and got behind it at around 7,000 feet when it made a sharp turn and headed straight for his P-51. Almost at the point of collision Gorman dived and said the light passed over his canopy at about 500 feet before cutting sharply once more and heading back in his direction. Then the object shot straight up in the air in climb so steep that his plane stalled. The object was not seen again. Gorman had been engaged in aerial maneuvers with the UFO for 27 minutes by the time he brought his plane in to land.

• Gorman reported that he noticed no sound, exhaust trail or odor from the object. And while he had reached speeds of up to 400 m.p.h. while in pursuit—he couldn’t keep up with whatever it was.

• “I’m convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvers,” Gorman said in a sworn statement to his commander. “I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate… [and] followed a natural curve.” “The object was not only able to out-turn and out-speed my aircraft… but was able to attain a far steeper climb and was able to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of my aircraft,” said Gorman.

• The small white orb UFO was also witnessed by air-traffic controllers Lloyd D. Jensen and H.E. Johnson, who were manning the Hector Airport tower. According to Johnson, the object was “travelling at a high rate of speed” and was “fast enough to increase the spacing between itself and [Gorman’s] fighter.” Johnson described the object as appearing to be “only a round light, perfectly formed, with no fuzzy edges or rays leaving its body.”

• Dr. A. E. Cannon, the pilot of the Piper Cub also flying in the vicinity, and his passenger also viewed the object both in the sky and upon their return to the airport where they immediately joined the traffic controllers in the tower. Two Civil Aeronautics Authority employees on the ground also reported seeing the object.

• Back in Fargo, after the Air Weather Service revealed it had released a lighted weather balloon 10 minutes before Gorman first saw the object, Air Force investigators pounced, proclaiming the balloon the likeliest explanation for the object seen. They determined that Gorman’s own maneuvers and high speed gave the balloon the appearance of moving in opposite directions as he passed by. Investigators also noted the bright appearance of Jupiter on that date, and that Gorman had been attempting to chase the bright dot of the planet at the same time the weather balloon was in range. This became the official government explanation.

• Gorman returned to the Air Force full-time, retiring at the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1969. He never spoke publicly about the encounter again, though he did tell friends “he was never convinced that he had been dueling with a lighted balloon for 27 minutes.” Gorman died in 1982.

In the words of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the man who investigated unidentified-flying-object reports for the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s, the Gorman Dogfight remains one of the “classics” among UFO sightings.

The incident, which still lacks an airtight explanation, involved a 27-minute air encounter between a veteran World War II fighter pilot named George F. Gorman and a mysterious white orb at high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gorman told a local newspaper following the October 1, 1948 event. “If anyone else had reported such a thing I would have thought they were crazy.”

Captain Ruppelt operated Project Blue Book, which continued the work of Project Sign and Project Grudge, a series of hush-hush studies conducted by the U.S. Air Force between 1947 and 1969. His mission: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.

What makes the Gorman Dogfight unique in the now-declassified pages of Project Blue Book is not only the length of the encounter, but that it was recorded both on the ground and in the sky by numerous reputable sources.

Chasing—and being chased by—a light

At the time of the incident, Gorman, a 25-year-old former fighter pilot, served as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard. It was this role that placed him behind the flight controls of a P-51 Mustang on Oct. 1, 1948, taking part in a cross-country flight alongside other National Guard airmen.

While the other pilots landed at Fargo’s Hector Airport, on that fateful evening Gorman stayed in the air in order to get in some night-flying time in the cloudless conditions. Having circled his P-51 over a lighted football stadium, he was preparing to land at about 9 P.M. Advised by the control tower that the only other plane in the vicinity was a Piper Cub (which Gorman could see about 500 feet below him), he witnessed what he believed to be the taillight of another craft passing on the right, though the tower had no other object on the radar.

Deciding to take a closer look at the unidentified object, Gorman pulled his plane up and closed to within about 1,000 yards. “It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely without fuzz at the edges,” he said of the object in his report. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”

Deciding to follow, Gorman tried in vain to catch up with the object, reporting that he finally got behind it at around 7,000 feet, where it made a sharp turn and headed straight for the P-51. Almost at the point of collision Gorman dived and said the light passed over his canopy at about 500 feet before cutting sharply once more and heading back in his direction. Just as collision seemed imminent once again, Gorman said the object shot straight up in the air in a steep climb—so steep that when he tried to intercept, his plane stalled at about 14,000 feet. The object was not seen again, but according to Gorman he had been engaged in aerial maneuvers with it for 27 minutes by the time he brought his plane in to land.

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